Paul Ryan: I’ve Evolved On Poverty Issue, Apologize For Callousness

The House Speaker acknowledged his own sins in a speech criticizing harsh presidential campaign rhetoric.

While condemning the harsh rhetoric of the 2016 presidential campaign, House Speaker Paul Ryan apologized for his own comments against poor people of color, reports Think Progress.

Ryan made this statement during his speech Wednesday on the state of American politics:

“There was a time when I would talk about a difference between ‘makers’ and ‘takers’ in our country, referring to people who accepted government benefits. But as I spent more time listening, and really learning the root causes of poverty, I realized I was wrong. ‘Takers’ wasn’t how to refer to a single mom stuck in a poverty trap, just trying to take care of her family. Most people don’t want to be dependent.”

According to Think Progress, Ryan later admitted that he was “callous” and “oversimplified and castigated [low-income] people with a broad brush.”

Ryan has promoted policies that would all but eliminate the social safety net, while talking about inner city people having a culture of poverty marked by generations of lazy men. For now, he’s only offering to change his rhetoric–not his policy perspective, Think Progress noted.

In his speech at the Capitol, Speaker Ryan declined to single out GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. Instead, he issued a blanket condemnation of the political discourse.

But underpinning the anti-immigrant, anti-woman, and pro-White supremacist rhetoric on the campaign trail are years of Republican policies that promoted those same values, the report points out.